Will you help put the complete Bible into the hands of the Bulgarian people?
You can! - for just £5.00 per copy
THE WHOLE BIBLE FOR BULGARIA
Is this yet another new Translation of the Bible? No!
Why does the existing one need to be revised?
The first Bulgarian Bible was translated and printed in 1871. The country had been under Turkish rule for more than 450 years and up until 1871 there had been no Bible in the Bulgarian language. American missionaries, Dr Albert Long and Elias Riggs worked in Bulgaria for many years - Elias Riggs spent 60 years there. They were the first to start work among the Bulgarian people and part of their work was to answer the need for spiritual books. Realising that God’s Word was not available in the language that the people spoke, they translated it.
One of two major problems with this version is that the punctuation doesn’t follow the rules of the current Bulgarian language and so it is difficult to understand the meaning. The other problem is that when the Communists came to power in 1944 they changed the spelling and dropped some of the letters which are no longer used. This former translation, being in the old spelling, is almost impossible to read now. It became more and more evident that certain corrections needed to be made in order to make it more clear, both linguistically and doctrinally.
Photo of Christodul Kostovich, Elias Riggs, Albert Long, and Petko Slaveikov, translators of the Bible into Bulgarian
After the openness, in 1989, a revision was carried out by some people who were young in the faith. They were not very familiar with the spiritual meaning of words or with their own mother tongue, which resulted in many errors. The problem was magnified by the fact that they worked mainly from the English text, which resulted in a very incorrect and illogical Bulgarian translation.
Who is carrying out the revision?
The revision team is led by Dr. Hristo Kulichev, who is very fluent in the Greek language. Hristo has suffered much for his faith, having been in prison during the Communist era. He was for many years President of the Congregational Union of Bulgaria and is now the senior pastor of the large Congregational Church in Sofia. A team is working with him to carry out linguistic and theological checks.
The Team Leader
Dr. Hristo Kulichev
What has already been accomplished?
With the financial help of SGA, this team completed the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs several years ago and the interest has been thrilling, with the first print run fully distributed. We were requested to help with a reprint, but because the progress on the revision of the rest of the Old Testament is almost complete, we have agreed to proceed with printing the whole Bible in 2008.
We in SGA are grateful to all who supported the printing and publishing of the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs and trust that you will continue to support us as we complete the printing of the whole Bible.
The cost of each Bible will be around £5.00 and 5000 copies are planned in the original print run.
